In this project I will revise and expand for publication the themes explored in my Ph.D. dissertation on the origins and early history of the National Institute of Health. The dissertation is focused on the activities of the Public Health Service in the late 1920s and the ambitions of its leaders as to the Service's future role, especially as embodied in the Parker bill, which reorganized the Service, and the Ransdell bill, which created the National Institute of Health. Both bills became law in 1930. I am also presenting briefly the activities of the Institute from 1930 until 1937 when the National Cancer Institute was created. In revising the manuscript for publication, I wish to expand my discussion of this latter section as well as the material on the early years of the Hygienic Laboratory, from its creation in 1887 until it became the National Institute. I also wish to sharpen my analysis of the biomedical community in the twentieth century through additional research in the papers of John J. Abel, a distinguished pharmaceutical research scientist of this period. In addition, the manuscript will receive a general revision for a broader public audience. The principal new primary source for this work is the John J. Abel papers at the Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins University. I will also continue to draw on the resources of the National Library of Medicine, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Institutes of Health library, and the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. Long range objectives of the study are: 1) to examine major shifts of policy in biomedical research from its modest beginnings through the significant transition period of the 1920s; 2) to study public and private sector interactions during years when chemotherapy was a hope without yet much substance.